A collection of thoughts, ideas, and opinions independently written by members of the MSU community and curated by MSU Libraries

Does the World Get You Down?

This is my last blog. The world is so fuXXed up that it is not possible to comment on all its absurdities. Besides it is too depressing. The only way to preserve sanity is to look at it with rose colored glasses, so I shall devote myself to things of beauty such as poetry and literature.

If you have not seen my historical novel, “The Quest for Land and Fortune,” may I urge you to go to Amazon and get a copy while they last. It is narrative non-fiction, the people are all real, but what they said to each other and what sort of blogs they might have written, is fiction, I was not there.

The New York Times of December 28, 2014, had a section entitled the “Year in Pictures. I list the cut-lines to illustrate my point.

01/09/2014 Displaced people on ferry led fighting between government forces and rebel in South Sudan.

02/24 Women took shelter from sniper fire in The Ukraine.

02/19 Anti-government protestors burned barricades in The Ukraine.

04/17 A protestor hurled a Molotov cocktail during clashes with police, Caracas, Venezuela.

04/30 A lockdown drill to address the threat of school shootings in a eighth-grade class, Belle Plaine, MN

03/12 A girl was wounded between riot police and anti-government protestors, Istanbul.

09/05 Medical workers took James Dorbor, 8, into a Ebola treatment center. Liberia.

011/25 Police clash with pro-democracy demonstrators, Hong Cong.

11/28 Senator Mitch McConnell re-elected from Kentucky. (He has declared global warming a hoax spread by those who dislike his state’s coal.)

10/18 Displaced persons camp where 140,000 have been uprooted. Myanmar.

09/27 A cradle left behind by Kurdish refugees along the Turkish-Syrian border.

11/28 Protest because Grand jury decided not to indict Daren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, Delwood MO.

12/08 Protestors against police brutality in the wake of Michael Brown, Berkeley.

12’16 Women mourn Mohammed Ali Khan, 15, one of 130 students killed during a Taliban attack on a school, Peshawar, Pakistan.

11/18 Ultra-Orthodox Jews listened to a eulogy for a Rabbi Killed in a synagogue by Palestinian gunmen. Jerusalem.

12/06 A four-year-old known as Sweetie, one of thousands, monitored for symptoms of Ebola. Sierra Leone

I add one event that does not photograph–the new Republican Congress has vowed to cancel Obama’s Affordable Care Act. I suspect that much of the opposition is a continuing racist reaction to the Black President.

See what I mean. During the Vietnam War, depressed by the daily body count, I stopped listening to network news. I never began again. Today, I canceled my subscription to the New York Times.

Thanks for following my blog. If you want more, I recommend following Bill Moyers and Robert Reich.

Alfred Allan Schmid, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Taught at MSU for 47 years in the Dept. of Agricultural, Food, Resource Economics. In addition to scholarly books, he more recently published a historical novel entitled "The Quest for Land and Fortune."